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Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures was founded on April 4, 1923 by Albert, Harry, Sam, and Jack Warner. It is a major film studio owned by Time Warner, a media corporation in New York City. 1937-1948 Fans of Warner Bros. films from the late 1930s and the 1940s will most likely see this logo before the movie. Examples of such films are The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Casablanca (1942), and The Verdict (1946). 1948-1967 Fans of Warner Bros. films from the 1950s and 1960s will certainly see this logo before the movie. Films with this logo include A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), East of Eden (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Fanny (1961), and My Fair Lady (1964). The last film to use this logo was Bonnie and Clyde (1967). 1967-1970 In November 1966, Seven Arts Productions merged together with Warner Bros., and the studio was renamed to Warner Bros.–Seven Arts. Due to the fact that the Warner Bros. logos seen from September 28, 1967 to May 18, 1984 do not look much like the popular WB Shield logo, Warner Bros. tends to plaster these logos with a newer one. Therefore, this is the first of four logos to be considered rare. 1970-1972 After Warner Bros.–Seven Arts became defunct in 1970, Kinney National Company bought Warner Bros.. However, this partnership only lasted for not more than two years. The logo appeared on A Clockwork Orange (1971), but only up to the 2000 DVD print. Other than that, the logo is very rare to find. 1972-1973 For at least 17 years, Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Music Group became subsidiaries of Warner Communications. Only a few films had this logo, nearly all of them from 1972. Of course, the logo does appear at the end of Steelyard Blues, released on January 31, 1973. 1973-1984 This was the last Warner Bros. logo ever seen prior to the 1980s "Shield" logo. Examples of movies that had this logo are The Exorcist (1973), All the President's Men (1976), and the first three Superman films (1978-1983), but nowadays, when seen on DVD, they most often use any of the newer logos below. 1984-1997 1984-1990 On June 8, 1984, when Gremlins (1984) premiered in theaters, it also marked the debut of the very popular WB Shield logo, with the old byline "A Warner Communications Company". Other films with this logo include The Goonies (1985), The Mission (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Beetlejuice (1988), and Batman (1989). 1990-1992 After Warner Communications went defunct in 1990, Time Warner took over as the current owner of Warner Bros.. The new byline, written as "A Time Warner Company", was first seen on March 9, 1990, with Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Other films that had this logo include Goodfellas (1990) and JFK (1991). 1992-1997 In 1992, the byline was changed yet again to "A Time Warner Entertainment Company", which remained until 2001. The logo shown above was seen on films like The Fugitive (1993), Nature Born Killers (1994), Batman Forever (1995), Mars Attacks! (1996), and L.A. Confidential (1997). All of the Warner Bros. logos from before 1998 do not have any original music. 1998-Present The currently-still-in-use Warner Bros. logo debuted on January 16, 1998 with Fallen (1998). For its first year, the logo had the words "75 Years Entertaining the World", and the studio was still a Time Warner Entertainment company, even after the "75 Years" variant ended in 1999. Then in 2000, AOL and Time Warner merged together, and beginning in February 2001, the Warner Bros. logo's byline changed to "An AOL Time Warner Company". After that, in 2003, when AOL broke up with Warner Bros., the byline changed back to "A Time Warner Company", and finally, starting in 2004, the byline now reads "A TimeWarner Company" with the word "TimeWarner" in its own logo font.